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Price McMurray

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Price McMurray

Associate Professor of Language & Literature
Polytechnic United Methodist Church 254
817-531-4905
pmcmurray@txwes.edu
Website

Courses Taught

  • Composition I (English 1301)
  • Composition II (English 1302)
  • Introduction to the Profession of English (English 2308)
  • Exploring American Literature (English 2326)
  • Exploring World Literature (English 2327)—traditional and online formats
  • Survey of American Literature (English 3320)
  • Survey of World Literature (English 3322)
  • Topics in American Literature (English 4322
  • Topics in World Literature (English 4330)
  • Special Topics: Science Fiction in Literature and Film (English 4399)

Education

  • University of South Carolina (M.A., 1994; Ph. D., 2000)
  • Major Area: Colonial and 19th-Century American Literature
  • Minor Area: 20th-Century American Literature
  • Yale University (Graduate study in Italian, 1985-88)
  • Stanford University (Graduate study in English, 1983-84)
  • Middlebury College (B.A. in American Literature, 1983)

Personal Biography 

Dr. Price McMurray joined the Wesleyan faculty in 2001. His teaching and research interests are eclectic, ranging from medieval Italian poetry to contemporary American fiction, and he is especially interested in the issues of literary influence and intertextuality. His scholarship has appeared in a variety of academic journals and been reprinted in critical collections such as Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism and Bloom’s Modern Critical Views.

Outside of school, Dr. McMurray enjoys tennis and cycling as well as spending time with his children Elaine and Jack.

Research Interests

  • American Romanticism
  • American novel
  • Dante
  • Speculative literature
Presentations

MLA Convention:

  • “There's No Text like Home: Poe, Hawthorne, and the Internalization of Quest Romance.”2012 Modern Language Association Convention. Washington State Convention Center. Seattle, WA. 7 January 2012. 
  • “‘If a Protest Falls in the Woods and There’s No One There To Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?’: Writing, Terrorism, and the Environmental Imaginary in A Friend of the Earth.” 2008 Modern Language Association Convention. Hilton San Francisco. San Francisco, CA. 29 December 2008.
  • “‘Earth’s Holocaust’ and the End of History.” 2008 Modern Language Association Convention. Hilton San Francisco. San Francisco, CA. 28 December 2008. 
  • “’Are You Alive or Dead?’: Representative Men and the Marginality of the Author in ‘P’s Correspondence.’” 2005 Modern Language Association Convention. Marriott Wardman Park. Washington, DC. 29 December 2005. 
  • “’An Egyptian Skull at Our Banquet’: Hawthorne, Emerson, and the Idealist Convivium.”2004 Modern Language Association Convention. Philadelphia Marriott. Philadelphia, PA. 30 December 2004.

Other Venues:

  • “All’s Fair in Love and War: Engendering Idealism in Howells’ ‘Editha.’” 2016 Annual Meeting of the Conference of College Teachers of English. Menger Hotel. San Antonio, TX. 4 March 2016 
  • “The Circuit of the Impious: Rhetoric and Nature in Inferno 16.” 71st Annual South Central MLA Conference. Radisson Hotel. Austin, TX. 18 October 2014.
  •  “Seeking in the Dark: Utopia and Dystopia in I Am Legend.” 2012 Annual Meeting of the Conference of College Teachers of English. Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. Fort Worth, TX. 2 March 2012. 
  • “‘Introduced Species’: Nature, Immigration, and Canonicity in The Tortilla Curtain.” 20th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. 22 May 2009.
  • “‘Malicious Agencies’: Gender and Desire in T.C. Boyle’s ‘A Women’s Restaurant.’”
  • 2004 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention. Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center. Roanoke, VA. 12 November 2004.
  • “’As If They Were Dantesque Devils…’: Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio and the Ethics of Comedy.” South Central Renaissance Conference 2004. Radisson Hotel. Austin, TX. 2 April 2004.
  • “Going Global in a Shrinking World: Authenticity and Identity in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats.” The 29th Annual Meeting of the Southern Comparative Literature Association. Omni Austin Hotel Downtown. Austin, TX. 19 Sept. 2003.
Publications

Reprints

  • ’Love Is As Much Its Demand, As Perception’: Hawthorne’s ‘Birth-mark’ and Emerson’s ‘Humanity of Science.’” Reprint. Short Story Criticism. Vol. 89. Ed. Larry Trudeau. Oklahoma City: Gale Research, 2006. 238-53. 
  • “Disabling Fictions: Race, History, and Ideology in Crane’s ‘The Monster.’” Reprint. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 148. Ed. Russell Whitaker. Oklahoma City: Thomson Gale, 2005. 182-92.
  • “Aristotle on the Pinnacle: Paradise Regained and the Limits of Theory.” Reprint. John Milton: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. 261-73. 

Other articles

  • “‘What a Strange Genealogy!’: Candide and the Limits of Enlightenment Historiography.” CCTE Studies LXXI (2006): 36-45. 
  • “’Take the thing at its worst!’: Realism and the Construction of Masculinity in Howells’ The Shadow of a Dream.” CCTE Studies LXVIII (2003): 21-30. 
  • “’I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim’: History and Idealism in ‘A Virtuoso’s Collection.’” CCTE Studies LXVII (2002): 32-42.